Electrified Pennsy R. R.

Whoever has traveled on electrified railroads can appreciate last week's decision of the Pennsylvania Railroad to electrify its 11,000 miles of track.

The Pennsy already operates an electrified suburban service out of Philadelphia. This is similar to the suburban lines of the Illinois Central at Chicago.

The Pennsy terminal at Manhattan is also electrified. Steam trains cannot linger underground in the tunnels that Manhattan traffic necessitates. So from Hell Gate, where the Pennsylvania connects with New England lines, to Manhattan Transfer in New Jersey, where steam locomotives replace electric ones for the long Pennsylvania hauls south and west, and to Long Island City where the Pennsy's Long Island trains change from electricity to steam--within all that great triangle electric locomotives haul the cars. For the same reason at Manhattan the New York Central hauls its trains by electricity to Harmon and the New York, New Haven & Hartford to New Haven.

The Pennsy's new project is to spend $100,000,000 the next seven or eight years electrifying its 325 miles of line (1,300 miles of track) between Manhattan and Wilmington. At Wilmington connection will be made with the Philadelphia electric lines. Thence the lines will eventually run westward through Pennsylvania to the Pittsburgh district, which soon will be electrified as are Philadelphia and Manhattan.

The 1,300 Manhattan-Wilmington miles of track will be the longest railroad electrification unit in the country. The St. Paul. whose partial electrification contributed most to that road's bankruptcy three years ago, has a total 646 miles of track. The Norfolk & Western, which carries coal across the Cumberland Mountains, has 77 miles of electrified track. The coal-carrying Virginian in the same territory has 231 miles.

But the Pennsy is not sole in its extensive plans. The New York Central a few months ago consulted with General Electric to electrify its tracks along the Hudson River from Manhattan towards Albany, and mayhap to Buffalo. And practically every other large system has plans, more or less detailed, in the same vein.